For those of you who use both Eclipse and NSIS, this one's for you.EclipseNSIS is a plugin for the Eclipse platform which enables editing,
compiling and testing Nullsoft Installer (NSIS) scripts.

Please feel free to try it out. I would love to get more feedback from actual users.
Also, if anyone is interested, I am looking for help:[list=1][*]Designing a cool logo and other graphics.[*]Testing it on Windows 98SE and Windows ME.[*]Translatiing it to other languages. It currently only supports US English.[/list=1]

It is still in pre-alpha state. I don't plan to move it to alpha until I finish the InstallOptions GUI.
It is not intended to replace any other NSIS GUI you may be using, but is simply meant to be a supplement to those who already work with the Eclipse platform.

Actually the next release will require Eclipse 3.1.
The release of Eclipse 3.1 has delayed my release, because of changes which have required me to port a lot of code from 3.0 to 3.1. On the plus side, 3.1 provides functionality which I had to previously code by hand, so I decided the upgrade was worth it.
I still plan on getting the release out by July 11th.

EclipseNSIS 0.9.0 is now available for download.
See the EclipseNSIS home page for details.
Also released is the EclipseNSIS InstallOptions Editor 0.9.0 for creating and editing InstallOptions scripts. This is an optional download and requires GEF 3.0 or better.
Both plugins require Eclipse 3.1.

Java developers may also be interested in the EclipseNSIS Utilities package which includes utilities for generating JNI header files and for digitally signing JAR files.

As always, I am looking for any and all bugs you may find. These may be entered in the EclipseNSIS project SourceForge Bug tracker. Feature Requests may also be entered.

I have one small problem. Looking at your screenshots, it uses the stadard monospaced text font. But on my system it has a small non-monospaced font, while the Eclipse text editor font is just fine. Any idea what could be causing this problem?

Maybe it would also be a good idea to make the default syntax highlighting colors look a bit more similar to the standard XML/HTML colors. Those colors are a bit darker and easier to read.

I have one small problem. Looking at your screenshots, it uses the stadard monospaced text font. But on my system it has a small non-monospaced font, while the Eclipse text editor font is just fine. Any idea what could be causing this problem?

I don't quite understand what you mean?

Quote:

Maybe it would also be a good idea to make the default syntax highlighting colors look a bit more similar to the standard XML/HTML colors. Those colors are a bit darker and easier to read.

I would welcome any suggestion you may have.
Of course, using the preferences page you can customize the colors as you wish.

Notes:
Please note that even though EclipseNSIS once again supports Windows 98 SE and Windows ME, Eclipse 3.1 tends to crash a lot on those platforms.
Hence, use of these platforms is discouraged for EclipseNSIS.

Hi,
I was hoping to get a hierarchical treeview of !included files in outline, current implementation is not really useful.

Note, I'm not an Eclipse advocate, haven't used it for any Java development, but fiddled with the CDT plugin. What I'd like to see is something similar to Project View of CDT.

I don't know if you'll ever implement a Project View for NSIS or even a NSIS Perspective, but before that I ponder over obtaining a hierarchical structure in Outline View (it *should* be possible because C structures are shown in treeview in Outline View of CDT).

Basically, when I click an !include directive in Outline I'd like the corresponding file opened in editor. Also a plus sign should appear next to it, so that I could see its Outline view when expanded. As you build the tree of !include'd files, don't forget to parse !addincludedir directives in sources as well. Thanks

I know this is not trivial, but if you do it, I believe your work will stand out from the rest.

Add this to the feature request list in the SourceForge page.
But I can tell you right off the bat that this is not something that is going to come soon.
I have had it in on my to-do list, but before I look at it, I plan to rewrite my NSIS parser and object model so that:
a) I can optimize the processing of document changes.
b) Support advanced features of the kind you suggest.
Bear in mind that I do this in my spare time- I do have a "real" job which pays the bills so that I can afford to do this one for free.

Hmmm... I have tested that configuration and it should work.
Some things to try:
1) Uninstall the plugins and reinstall using the update site: http://eclipsensis.sf.net/update
2) Check the .log file in the your workspace .metadata folder and see if it is reporting any errors.
3) Run eclipse from the command line and specify -vm <path to java>\java.exe (This will print to the console any errors which are not reported in the .log file.

i downloaded (again) eclipse, downloaded GEF and eclipsensis from updates (as you said).
the log does not contain any errors.
runned eclipse from console with specified parameter and nothing appears in the cosole.
i hit the compile/compile and run buttons and nothing happens.

Does Eclipse hang or is it just the button going gray?
Also, could you check via task manager whether the MakeNSIS process has been started?
If you get Process Explorer, you can get the exact command line used to execute MakeNSIS.
Next, check whether a hidden window of window class "Hidden EclipseNSIS Window" has been created. You can check this using Microsoft Visual Studio Spy++ or WinSpy++ .
What is the full path name of your Eclipse installation and what is the full path name of your script file?
Did you install the standard NSIS 2.09 distribution or some other one?
Did you accept the default installation type or did you change something in it? (I mean the installation types you see when you run the NSIS 2.09 installer).
I, too, really don't understand what is going on... hundreds of people have downloaded the plugin and not reported a problem like this.

eclipse does not hang, but the compile button (after i press it) becomes grey and remains grey. if i minimize/restore eclipse it is enabled again.
in process explorer - only once makensis appeared. the first time i opened a script after installed eclipsensis. is was there only for a second. after that - nothing. the nsis installation is detected because if i change the path (in eclipsensis configuration), i get an error message.
in winspy - yes, there is a hidden window of window class "Hidden EclipseNSIS Window". what should i do with it ?

full path of eclipse "c:\program files\eclipse". also tried "C:\eclipse"
full path to my script - not relevant. i tried from root dir and does not work.

The brief run of MakeNSIS means that EclipseNSIS is verifying the compiler version.
The fact that the button is reactivated when you minimize and maximize Eclipse means that MakeNSIS has been run successfully. Something seems to be going wrong while processing its results.
The hidden window is used by MakeNSIS to communicate with EclipseNSIS. If it is being created, try manually compiling the script using MakeNSIS and pass the /NOTIFYHWND HWND argument where HWND is the handle number of the hidden window in decimal format and see if the script compiles OK.
Does the EclipseNSIS console view display?
If not, can you open it using the views menu and see if any output is shown in it?
I'm sorry but I really don't understand what could be going wrong.
Are there any special permissions involved- e.g., are you not an admin on the computer.
Does this problem occur with every script or just one script?
If it is just one script can you PM it to me?

If you compile an independent script without opening a NSIS script from the workspace, the script won't compile. At this time, the "EclipseNSIS Console" window doesn't open. It also doesn't output anything, neither if you have the window open or closed.

After the first time you open a NSIS script from the workspace, any NSIS script can be compiled normally, including independent NSIS scripts...

If you close all documents, and open an independent NSIS script, then the same problem happens again.

EDIT: The "Code Folding" feature doesn't work as well. It only works for scripts in the workspace.

This is not an EclipseNSIS bug. Eclipse does not provide access to all the cool editing features (folding, problem markers, etc.) for files which are not in an Eclipse project. Hence you will not see these features available when you open an external file in Eclipse. (It is the same for any Eclipse editor- check out the Java editor).

Similarly, EclipseNSIS reads and writes certain attributes in a file which is compiled or edited using EclipseNSIS. However, because of the limitations of Eclipse, these attributes can only be set for files which are part of an Eclipse project. Hence, the normal compile and test functions of EclipseNSIS will not work for an external file. The file HAS to be part of an Eclipse project for EclipseNSIS to function properly.

I am surprised that you are able to compile an external (independent) NSIS script since EclipseNSIS does not support this- it will not compile a file which is not in the Eclipse workspace- the currently released code simply will NOT do it.

The next version of EclipseNSIS may support this- however you still will not get code folding or problem markers, etc.- Eclipse just doesn't provide these features for external files (I would have to rewrite most of the Eclipse editor from scratch- which is just not worth the time since it is much easier for the user to just create a new project).

Notes:
I was mistaken when I earlier said that Eclipse does not support annotations and folding for external files. While it is true that Eclipse does not support these features by default, it does provide the tools to build support for them. The result- most of the functionality for both EclipseNSIS and InstallOptions editor is avaialable for both external as well as internal (workspace) files. What is not available (obviously) is storing and retrieving custom compilation options for external files. This is only available for workspace files. External files will use the global compilation options set using the EclipseNSIS Preferences page.

As always, I am looking for any and all bugs you may find. These may be entered in the EclipseNSIS project SourceForge Bug tracker. Feature requests may also be entered.